English opposition was not the only difficulty that Warren Hastings had to contend with. Like the monarch in the Arabian tale who discerns armies marching against his capital from every point of the compass, Hastings found enemies rising up against him in all directions. A league of three native powers menaced the safety of the British possessions. The Mahratta states combined with the Nizam of the Deccan. Both again combined with a new power whose rise had been as rapid as it was alarming, the Mohammedan power of Haidar in Mysore. When Warren Hastings arrived in India the second time Haidar was in his sixty-seventh year. He was born in 1702 as the son of a Mogul officer in the Punjaub. At his death Haidar held a rank somewhat similar to that of a captain in the service of the Emperor of Delhi. Haidar deemed, and rightly deemed, that there was little or no opportunity for his ambition in that service, and his eyes seeking for a better chief, found the man in Nunjeraj, the nominal vizier and real ruler of the Rajah of Mysore. In 1750 Haidar persuaded the troops under his command to leave their Mogul prince and take service with the sovereign of Mysore. Under that sovereignty he rose rapidly to distinction. Though he was little better than a robber chieftain, the ablest and most daring robber of a horde of robbers, his power grew so rapidly that in time he was able to supplant Nunjeraj, and in the end to usurp the sovereignty of Mysore in 1761. Haidar had his bitter grudge against the English. In 1771 he had been badly beaten by the Mahrattas and had appealed to the English to help him, as they had {266} undertaken by treaty to do. But the help was refused to the defeated prince, and the defeated prince swore an oath of vengeance against the English, and when the time seemed ripe he did his best to keep his oath. When in 1779 France declared war against England, Haidar declared in favor of the French. He gave his sword to the service of the Grand Confederacy in 1778 and prepared to march upon Madras. The President and the Council were taken unawares. It was not until Haidar had marched with fire and sword into the Carnatic, and that the smoke of the villages he destroyed in his progress could be seen from Madras, that they learned that Haidar was in earnest and not merely making a menace in the hope of frightening the English into an advantageous treaty. Hastings himself seems to have been convinced that Haidar did not mean to attack the Company, but when the Mysore prince's purpose was plain every effort was made to stay his onset. Lord Macartney, although not one of the Company's servants, was made Governor of Madras. Haidar was compelled for the time to abandon his attempt upon the Carnatic. In 1783 his hatred of the English was ended by his sudden death. But he bequeathed it as a rich legacy to his son Tippu, a man as daring and as ambitious as his sire.